Americans will certainly enjoy this look back at some music you might have been aware of way back when. While some of these bands might still be around, help I’m almost positive that no one cares about them anymore. If you are part of my international audience, pills which could theoretically exist, America doesn’t have a very long history so, relatively speaking, these are some of the most important musicians of all time in the USA, and you should know all about them.

Limp Bizkit

Fred Durst. Also some girls who were not in Limp Bizkit.

Limp Bizkit was a band of sorts headed by Fred Durst who sang all of their songs, wore a red hat, and I don’t know what else. There was also a goofy-looking bassist and some other guys who were not in the least bit interesting.

They had a song called “Nookie.” “Nookie” might refer to sex because I think the chorus was like, “I did it all for the nookie,” but then the next line was something like, “so you can take that cookie and stick up your YEAH.” It was not a good lyric, but I can’t really blame him since there isn’t much else that rhymes with “nookie.” It was an okay try, anyway.

The only other two songs I can remember were called “Rollin’” and “Break Stuff,” which were both songs about being angry. These songs appealed to suburban kids like me, who had a lot to be pissed off about all of the time. I probably listened to them while I did my homework. I don’t remember.

Once a sex tape involving Fred Durst ended up on the internet, but only Fred Durst thought that someone might intentionally download or transfer it. The internet didn’t even want the video, and in the end, it was not something anyone could say they had ever seen or cared about.

Slipknot

Slipknot’s drummer, whose long nose would swing about suggestively as he played the drums

Slipknot came to America at a time when we all really needed a metal band to like, but we did not want their faces to be visible at all. Slipknot probably had at least a singer, a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and for some reason I feel like there was a DJ guy who scratched records or something. But I’m not sure if a DJ is something a metal band would ever have. If you care, you can look it up. I don’t. They had a song called “Wait and Bleed,” and this song was less grating than all their other songs so it became really popular. Slipknot probably existed before releasing this song, and the people who liked them before they became popular probably complained a lot about how the band sold out and felt really down in the dumps about this betrayal. This is not something I have any memory of, but rather something I know Americans like to do with any band that doesn’t achieve national popularity within several days of the band’s coming into being.

So, yeah. This band always wore these spooky masks, which was a pretty edgy thing to do. We weren’t sure of their true identities and so everyone speculated that perhaps the members of Slipknot were actually living among us as our friends and neighbors and we didn’t even know it because we had no idea what they looked like. Anyway, I never bought any Slipknot albums, nor did I ever mosh outdoors in a field of mud and poop so I guess this wasn’t really my thing.

Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson. Twiggy (?) and drummer dude in the back, band members who no one has ever cared about at all.

Believe it or not, the United States of America was once a God-fearing, Christian nation, but Marilyn Manson single-handedly changed all of that through the power of song. At first some people didn’t like Marilyn Manson because they thought maybe he wasn’t that good, but then he released a single called “The Dope Show” and everyone in America thought it was awesome. Following the success of “The Dope Show,” a lot of people stopped celebrating Christmas and Easter and many elementary school children started rejecting socially-constructed gender norms. Around this time Africanized honey bees, or “killer bees,” were making their way across America, which in itself was pretty scary for most of us. So all in all it was a very difficult time.

Unsurprisingly, with the popularity of weirdos like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc., Marilyn Manson has lost a lot of the shock value he once had. A lot of parents even ended up feeling kind of bad for being so critical of his outlandish image because they realized his goth makeup actually served to make him look somehow less creepy, a fact that America became acutely aware of after seeing the movie Jawbreaker, in which Manson played the role of a guy who had well-groomed mustache but no make-up.

Insane Clown Posse

ICP: A real thing that people like

ICP consists of two guys who…

OK. God. Uh, one guy calls himself Violent J and the other one is Shaggy. They wear clown makeup whenever they perform or make any kind of appearance. They rap sort of? I have heard it said that Shaggy is “ninety-five percent of the duo’s talent,” and I really can’t imagine what that could possibly mean. I don’t think it was meant to be ironic.

Some people I guess feel that ICP is good or they just like clowns or I don’t know. They call themselves juggalos (the feminine form being “juggalette”) and wear hoodies and maybe put on clown makeup sometimes. I think there aren’t many juggalos/juggalettes left so I can only assume that most of them grew up and moved on to get PhDs and make positive contributions to society.

Oh, yeah. ICP had a feud with Eminem and so ICP made the song “Slim Anus,” a clever pun on “Slim Shady,” which is the nickname of Eminem’s alter-ego or something I don’t really get? Whatever. You’re probably wondering what the feud was about, but I’m not going to bore you with the details because I have no idea what they are. Basically, though, rappers are always feuding with each other over things that even the American public doesn’t really seem to care about.

I don’t know what has become of ICP, and I will not google them.

Final Ratings

Please don’t think these ratings have anything to do with music or talent or anything like that. They don’t.

Limp Bizkit: 2.5 out of 6 burgers

I kind of like Fred Durst because he never seemed like an absolutely terrible human being, which I’m not sure I can say for anyone else on this list. For that reason, I am giving Limp Bizkit some burgers.

Slipknot: 0 out of 6 burgers

I really just don’t like these guys at all.

Marilyn Manson: 3.5 burgers

He gave parents someone other than themselves to blame upon realizing that their children weren’t turning out so well–at a time when most American children really weren’t turning out so well.

Insane Clown Posse: .5 out of 6 burgers

I’m giving them half a burger because the part in “Miracles” where Shaggy goes, “fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?” makes me laugh a lot. I don’t know how magnets work either, Shaggy.